5 Myths Used to Justify Death By Drone and America's Assassination Policy

Obama's drone war relies on propaganda to keep the American public from understanding the inhumanity of high-tech drone killings.

August 12, 2013

AlterNet / By Robert Greenwald

America’s never-ending war on terrorism is almost always depicted in the mainstream media as a military and intelligence agency fight on a global battlefield. But it is also a propaganda war where the public is fed inaccuracies from Washington, especially when it comes to overseas killings by U.S. military drones.

Here are five myths perpetuated by the military and its weapons makers that seek to make Americans feel good about drones and the White House’s policy of targeted assassinations. 

Myth #1: They Target High Level Terrorists

Only two percent of drone strikes have killed “high value targets,” former counter-terror advisor to David Patreus, David Kilcullen, notoriously remarked in a New York Times column early in the Obama presidency, where he said that 50 civilians were killed for every “high-value target” assassinated. That means that 98 percent of drone-caused deaths have been a mix of low-level militants, civilians, or another dubious Pentagon classification called “unknown militants.” 

This spring McClatchy and later  NBC reported that 25 percent of those killed in drone strikes in Pakistan have been classified as “unknown militants.”  So by its own admission, the CIA has no idea whom they are killing about a quarter of the time.  Keep in mind that if a military-aged male is killed in a strike they are automatically presumed to be militants. The implication being, there is a huge room for error, and many of these “unknown militants” are likely civilians.  In one case, the CIA classified 20-22 “unknown militants” killed. This strike actually killed around 40 civilians.     

Myth #2: Drones Are Accurate 

The Pentagon rhetoric touting “pin point” and “laser” accuracy of drones is baseless. Dr. Larry Lewis, a principal research scientist at the Center for Naval Analyses, a research group with close ties to the US military, studied the record in Afghanistan and found that drone strikes were no more accurate than traditional air power. So, after all this talk about the ability to discern enemies through surveillance, they are no more accurate traditional fly-bys.  This rhetoric has allowed us to kill innocent children.

Notably, this study was done in Afghanistan, where there is ample ground and human intelligence for selecting and assessing targets, as well as people who investigate the aftermath of the strikes. But that is not the case in Pakistan and Yemen, which means that the strikes have been more deadly for civilians. The implications from this reality are cynical and cavalier: Either the information on the ground is faulty, or drone operators are okay with certain levels of civilian casualties. Regardless, drones fall far short of the hyped rhetoric coming from the Obama administration.   

Myth #3: Drone Targets Imminently Threaten America

The mainstream media have played into the CIA/Administration’s selective leaks about drones, especially the concept of a “kill list.” This military branding conjures up a process of carefully selected enemies who pose imminent threats to the U.S. However, the reality of “signature strikes” undercuts this P.R. construction.  

Never officially acknowledged by the administration, signature strikes target unknown suspected militants who display “pattern of live” behavior associated with Al Qaeda and the Taliban. What the “patterns” consist of is officially a secret. What we do know is that as soon as signature strikes were implemented there was a spike in number of drone strikes and the number people killed in strikes.   

Furthermore, reporting has recently revealed that the original authorization for drone strikes in Pakistan came from now deposed President Musharraf. The only way he would approve of the strikes was if the CIA killed his enemies. These  "side-payments" became a characteristic of the CIA program. Instead of focusing on enemies of the U.S., the CIA played along with Pakistan’s intelligence agency, ISI, and its military to hit targets who posed no threat to the U.S. 

Myth #4 Drones Are Cheap

Setting aside the moral, legal, and efficacy arguments about drones, the mantra from the administration, lobbyists and their lackeys in Congress has been drone’s low per-unit cost of $4 million to $5 million.  According to Winslow Wheeler of the Project On Government Oversight, “This is quite incorrect.” He states, “The actual cost for a Reaper unit is $120.8 million in 2012 dollars.” This is far above the $27.2 million dollar F-16C or the $18.8 million A-10. Seemingly, this “aura of inevitability” about investing in this new revolutionizing weapon is the military-industrial-complex at its self-serving worst.    

Myth #5: Drones Are Making Americans Safer

They are not, in fact. Not only are drones effectible destabilizing a nuclear power, Pakistan, in one of the most conflict-ridden regions of the world, they are inciting waves of suicide bombers to attack Pakistan. They are also directly threatening the U.S. 

In a global age connectivity there is a new phenomenon of self- radicalization. People who identify with the Muslim Diaspora are seeing their kinsmen being murdered by America in a most brutal way. The Boston Marathon bombers are only the latest example of this phenomenon. The most notorious self-radicalized terrorist was Faisal Shahzad, who, in 2010, tried to blow up New York’s Times-Square. When asked about his motive, he  directly cited drones.  

These rebels with a cause will sadly become the norm as we push and provoke more of the world’s 1.3-1.4 billion Muslims into the political fringes where American violence begets more violence.   

                                                                                                        ***

Last fall I traveled to Pakistan where I witnessed first-hand the horror and challenges people of Pakistan face while living under drones. I went to Pakistan to investigate the civilian casualties caused by U.S. drone strikes and to speak with Pakistani people about how drone strikes impact their families, their communities, and their lives. During my travels I met many people including Rafiq ur Rehman, his son, and his two young daughters whose mother was killed in a drone strike. She was out in a field with no one else around except grazing cattle.

I met with others who had lost limbs and loved ones in the senseless strikes that cause anxiety and terror to everyone in the community.  During my visit, it became clear that I had to bring these stories back to the United States so that everyone could know the horror that occurs in our name.  This fall my organization, Brave New Foundation, will release a documentary on this experience in Pakistan.    
We’re working to break through the myths and expose the truth about drone strikes.  This fall we plan to bring victims of drone strikes in Pakistan to the United States to speak with Congress about the horrors that they face daily living under drones.  Will you help bring these victims here to help expose the truth?   Please donate today. Every dollar makes a difference. 

Robert Greenwald is a producer, director and political activist. He is the founder and president of Brave New Films, a new media company that uses moving images to educate and empower viewers to take action around issues that matter. He is a board member of the Independent Media Institute, AlterNet's parent organization.

Anti-war leaders condemn U.S. drone strikes on Yemen

Minneapolis, MN
FightbackNews

Meredith Aby of the Twin Cities-based Anti-War Committee condemned the escalating wave of U.S. drone strikes in Yemen, stating, “There have been eight drone attacks in the past two weeks in Yemen which have killed more than 30 people. The U.S. is waging an undeclared war in Yemen and increasing the anger at the U.S. for its use of drones on civilians. It is particularly insulting to our sisters and brothers in the Muslim world that this escalation of drone strikes has corresponded with the end of Ramadan and the celebration of Eid. The president claims these drone strikes make us safer, when in fact they do the opposite. The people of Yemen see these attacks for what they are – acts of imperialism."

Joe Iosbaker, of the Anti-War Committee-Chicago, said of the drone strikes, “In May, President Obama told us that the U.S. use of drone warfare would be declining, but clearly that’s not happening. There is no real change in the Obama doctrine of drone war. According to the U.S., we can strike into any country at any time. This is the unlawful behavior of an imperialist country.”

Iosbaker and Aby are helping to organize the Midwest Action Against Drones (MAAD) scheduled for Sept. 29 - 30. 

Midwest Action Against Drones (MAAD)
Saturday & Sunday, September 28-29, 2013

End Drone Warfare Abroad and Spying at Home!
No Killer Drone for Boeing!
No New Wars on Iran and Syria!
Money for Jobs, Healthcare, and Education-NOT FOR WAR!

Join us at Millennium Park in Chicago on Saturday, September 28th at 3:00 for a rally and march to Boeing Headquarters! On September 29th, from 9:30 am -3:00 pm, we will have a conference featuring speakers & workshops from activists and organizers from across the Midwest region!

 Women Against Military Madness and Anti-War Committee are organizing vans to Chicago for this rally and conference.  Call WAMM 612.827.5364 or info@antiwarcommittee.org for more details.

10 Ways to Reduce the Threat of Terrorist Attacks on Americans by Medea Benjamin

Attendees were given this talk outlined below by Medea Benjamin in Minneapolis on Tuesday August 6 at the Spirit of St. Stephen's. Women Against Military Madness (WAMM) and the Justice, Education, and Action Committee (JEAC) sponsored her talk.

1. Declare a moratorium on drone strikes.
The head of Al Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri, is calling on jihadists to retaliate for U.S. drone strikes in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen. The Yemeni group Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), where the U.S. says the threats are emanating from, is also calling for retaliation for drones strikes (there have been four strikes in Yemen since July 28). Drone strikes have become the number one recruiting tool for extremists. By grounding the drones, we will stop creating new enemies faster than we can kill them.

2. Close the U.S. drone base in Saudi Arabia.
One of the reasons Osama bin Laden said he hated the United States was that the U.S. had military bases in the Holy Lands in Saudi Arabia. President Bush quietly closed those bases in 2003 but in 2010 President Obama secretly reopened a base there for launching drones into Yemen. It's a national security threat ripe for blowback. So are many of the over 800 U.S. bases peppered all over the world. We can save billions of taxpayer dollars, and make ourselves safer, by closing them.

3. Free the 86 Guantanamo prisoners cleared for release.
The U.S. treatment of Guantanamo prisoners, holding people indefinitely without charges or trials and brutally force-feeding the hunger strikers, is an affront to people throughout the Muslim world and a blatant hypocrisy of our American values. Of the 166 prisoners left in Guantanamo, 86 have been cleared for release, meaning the U.S. government has determined they represent no threat to our nation. President Obama can use the waiver system, certifying to Congress that it is in the U.S. national interest to release them. He just did this, for the first time, for two Algerian prisoners. He should do this for all 86 cleared prisoners, then bring the remaining prisoners to the U.S. for trials.

4. Apologize and compensate innocent victims.
There is a perception in the Muslim world that the U.S. government does not value their lives. Airstrikes have killed many innocent people and only in the cases of Afghanistan and Iraq has there been a way, albeit woefully inadequate, for aggrieved families to seek redress. The U.S. should agree to apologize and compensate the families of innocent people who have been killed or maimed by the U.S. armed forces or CIA.

5. Go for the "zero option" in Afghanistan: withdraw all U.S. troops.
The 11-year U.S. occupation of Afghanistan has provided fodder for the Taliban in both Afghanistan and Pakistan, while propping up an unpopular and corrupt regime in Kabul. And if the U.S. troops were not in Afghanistan, the Taliban would not be trying to cross the Pakistani border to kill U.S. soldiers. President Obama promised to end the U.S. occupation by the end of 2014, but is now weighing options for keeping thousands of troops and military contractors behind. Bad idea.

6. Sit down and talk. The Taliban opened an office in Qatar in June to finally start long-delayed talks with the U.S.. But due to President Karzai's objections, the talks were nixed. It's long past the time to talk to the Taliban, and then move on to talk to those elements in Al Qaeda who are more rational and open to negotiations. If you look at the Rand Corporation's study of the demise of 268 terrorist groups, 43 percent dissolved by joining the political process, 40 percent from better policing, and only 7 percent through military action. We've been using military action for over a decade; it's time for another approach.

7. Stop supporting dictatorships and repressive militaries.
The U.S. recently signed the largest arms deal in history with the monarchy of Saudi Arabia, the same government that rolled its tanks into neighboring Bahrain to crush the democratic uprising there. In Egypt, U.S. weapons and tear gas were used for decades against peaceful demonstrators, and continue to be used against peaceful protesters supporting ousted Muslim Brotherhood. While weapons sales to undemocratic and/or unstable regimes might be good for U.S. weapons manufacturers, they are bad for the reputation and security of the American people.

8. Support non-violent democracy movements.
Terrorists thrive best where there is chaos and instability. Nurturing democratic institutions and non-violent civil society are key to thwarting the growth of extremist movements. The U.S. needs to do more than support these efforts; it also needs to listen to them. In Yemen, the U.S. is helping to fund the 6-month experiment in democracy called the National Dialogue Conference, where 565 extremely diverse members of society are meeting daily to map out the nation's future. The conference recently passed, by overwhelming vote, a resolution declaring drones strikes and all extrajudicial killing illegal. Unfortunately, the U.S. has refused to abide by the popular will thus far.

9. Adhere to the international rule of law.
In its war on terror, the U.S. has been killing terror suspects with blatant disregard for international law and national sovereignty. A July 18 Pew poll of 39 nations found fierce global opposition to U.S. drone strikes, particularly in the Muslim world. If the U.S. wants help and sympathy in rooting out would-be attackers, it has to show the world it will stop using extrajudicial assassinations and start adhering to international law.

10. Spend foreign aid money on education, health care and lifting people out of poverty.
For a fraction of the money we keep wasting each month on the failed war in Afghanistan or supporting the already wealthy Israeli military, we could be building schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan, helping Yemenis find a solution to their water shortages, and providing humanitarian aid to Syrian refugees. We'll make a lot more friends building clinics, wells, electrical grids and schools than vaporizing people with Hellfire missiles.
This 10-point plan would significantly reduce terrorist threats, save taxpayers billions of dollars and make Americans more loved and admired in the world. After a decade of wielding the military stick, it's time for some carrots.

Medea Benjamin, cofounder of CODEPINK and Global Exchange,
is author of Drone Warfare: Killing by Remote Control.

 View this article on the Huffington Post

Bureau Investigation Finds Fresh Evidence of CIA Drone Strikes on Rescuers

Published on Thursday, August 1, 2013 by Bureau of Investigative Journalism

If proved, US targeting of rescuers who respond to scene of earlier explosions are clearly "war crimes"

by Chris Woods with additional reporting by Mushtaq Yusufzai

The Bureau’s field researcher found five double-tap strikes took place
in mid-2012, one of which also struck a mosque.

The Bureau’s field researcher found five double-tap strikes took place in mid-2012, one of which also struck a mosqueA field investigation by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism in Pakistan’s tribal areas appears to confirm that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) last year briefly revived the controversial tactic of deliberately targeting rescuers at the scene of a previous drone strike. The tactic has previously been labelled a possible war crime by two UN investigators.

The Bureau’s new study focused mainly on strikes around a single village in North Waziristan – attacks that were aimed at one of al Qaeda’s few remaining senior figures, Yahya al-Libi. He was finally killed by a CIA drone strike on June 4 2012.

Congressional aides have previously been reported as describing to the Los Angeles Times reviewing a CIA video showing Yahya al-Libi alone being killed. But the Bureau’s field research appears to confirm what others reported at the time – that al-Libi’s death was part of a sequence of strikes on the same location that killed up to 16 people.

If correct, that would indicate that Congressional aides were not shown crucial additional video material. The CIA has robustly rejected the charge. Spokesman Edward Price told the Bureau: ‘The CIA takes its commitment to Congressional oversight with the utmost seriousness. The Agency provides accurate and timely information consistent with our obligation to the oversight Committees. Any accusation alleging otherwise is baseless.’

Tactic revived

The Bureau first broke the story of the CIA’s deliberate targeting of rescuers in a February 2012 investigation for the Sunday Times. It found evidence of 11 attacks on rescuers - so-called ‘double-tap’ strikes – in Pakistan’s tribal areas between 2009 and 2011, along with a drone strike deliberately targeting a funeral, causing mass casualties.

Reports of these controversial tactics ended by July 2011. But credible news reports emerged a year later indicating that double-tap strikes had been revived.

International media including the BBC, CNN and news agency AFP variously reported that rescuers had been targeted on five occasions between May 24 and July 23 2012, with a mosque and prayers for the dead also reportedly bombed.

Article continues on Read on.....

The huge drone that could not be grounded

A major defense contractor used campaign donations and insider access on Capitol Hill to defy the Air Force and keep a troubled drone aloft at a cost to taxpayers of billions of dollars

By Richard H.P. SiaAlexander Cohen

July 16, 2013 Updated July 18, 2013 
The Center for Public Integrity • Investigative Journalism from a Nonprofit Newsroom

About this story

• An Air Force proposal to save $2.5 billion by closing a drone production line and mothballing some of the aircraft was defeated this year and last year by its manufacturer, Northrop Grumman.
• The drone, known as the Global Hawk Block 30, had numerous  operating flaws and recurrent maintenance troubles.
• Twenty-six lobbyists helped block the Air Force proposal, including many former congressional staff.
• Northrop’s employees and PAC invested a half-million dollars in the 2012 election campaigns by members of the key decisionmaking committee, House Armed Services, and have given its chairman $113,000 since 2009.

An RQ-4B Global Hawk Block 30 prepares to land at Beale Air Force Base in Yuba County, Calif.
Chris Kaufman/AP

With large budget cuts looming in the next decade, top Air Force officials knew last year they needed to halt spending on some large and expensive programs. So they looked for a candidate that was underperforming, had busted its budget, and wasn’t vital to immediate combat needs.

They soon settled on the production line for a $223 million aircraft with the wingspan of a tanker but no pilot in the cockpit, built to fly over vast terrain for a little more than a day while sending imagery and other data back to military commanders on the ground. Given the ambitious name “Global Hawk,” the aircraft had cost far more than expected, and was plagued by recurrent operating flaws and maintenance troubles.

“The Block 30 [version of Global Hawk] is not operationally effective,” the Pentagon’s top testing official had declared in a blunt May 2011 report about the drones being assembled by Northrop Grumman in Palmdale, Calif.

Canceling the purchase of new Global Hawks and putting recently-built planes in long-term storage would save $2.5 billion over five years, the service projected. And the drone’s military missions could be picked up by an Air Force stalwart, the U-2 spy plane, which had room for more sensors and could fly higher.

But what happened next was an object lesson in the power of a defense contractor to trump the Pentagon’s own attempts to set the nation’s military spending priorities amid a tough fiscal climate. A team of Northrop lobbyists, packed with former congressional staff and bolstered by hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions, persuaded Congress to demand the drone’s continued production and operation.

In so doing, the contractor — which had revenue of $25.2 billion in 2012, more than 90 percent from the federal treasury — defied not only the leadership of the Air Force, but also the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Army Gen. Martin Dempsey. He told the House Armed Services Committee in February 2012 that the Global Hawk “has fundamentally priced itself out of our ability to afford it.” The White House, in two messages to Congress last year, said it “strongly objects” to the lawmakers’ demand for additional Global Hawks, but the protests were to no avail.

Northrop’s strikingly successful campaign to thwart the government culminated in a letter  this May from two influential House lawmakers to newly installed Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, reminding him of the requirement to buy three more of the drone aircraft. The Air Force, they complained to Hagel, had not heeded “clear congressional intent [and] explicit direction to complete the acquisition.”

The letter, whose authors — Rep. Howard “Buck” McKeon, R-Calif., and Rep. Jim Moran, D-Va. — received a total of $135,100 from Northrop Grumman’s political action committee and employees for their election campaigns and leadership PACs since the beginning of 2009, is emblematic of the political forces that helped stoke a 117 percent jump in the Defense Department’s procurement budget from fiscal year 2001 through its peak in fiscal year 2010.

Those forces are now causing some lawmakers to resist the drawdown in military spending that President Obama and some military analysts say is needed to help shrink the federal deficit, projected to be $759 billion this year, and repair the nation’s long-term economic health.

Northrop Grumman’s political strategy “is entirely predictable — hire the right people, target the right people, contribute to the right people, then link them together with subcontractors and go for the gold,” said Gordon Adams, who served as the senior White House budget official for national security from 1993 to 1997 and has studied defense spending and procurement for more than 30 years.

“Killing a major program, in production, is rather like vampire-killing,” Adams added. “You have to drive a silver stake through its heart to make sure it is dead.”

The battle over the Global Hawk is one of many in which a major defense contractor and its influential friends in Congress have forced the military to spend money on hardware it doesn’t want. An Army proposal in 2011 to stop refurbishing the M1 Abrams tank to save $3 billion was blocked by the same House and Senate defense panels in response to the lobbying muscle of the tank manufacturer, General Dynamics.

A contractor-driven campaign “often works,” Adams said. “It eked out more F-22 [fighters] than the Air Force wanted. It extended the C-17 [transport] production line by several years as Congress ordered up 10 more aircraft beyond what the Air Force needed.”

The case of the Global Hawks Block 30s also shows how lawmakers — even deficit hawks who say they want to slash federal spending — still earmark money for favored defense projects, even though such earmarks are formally prohibited by both House and Senate rules.

In this case, the fiscal year 2013 defense authorization bill Congress passed last December and the spending bill it enacted in March require the Air Force not only to keep flying Block 30s for roughly $260 million a year through calendar year 2014, but to also spend as much as $443 million on three more. The House — which has been Northrop Grumman’s close ally in the fight — voted in June for a fiscal year 2014 defense authorization bill that extends Block 30 operations two additional years, through 2016.

Unexpected maintenance and flight problems
The Global Hawk at issue — the largest drone in the U.S. arsenal — is a successor to a smaller Block 10 drone that the Air Force flew successfully from 2001 until 2011. Northrop Grumman hailed the Block 30 as an “unblinking eye” platform that does a better job of tracking objects on the ground for a longer period.

But in a reversal of the prescribed path in which weapons systems are designed and fully tested before going into full production and being dispatched to war zones, Global Hawks were pressed quickly into service over Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, the Horn of Africa, Japan and Haiti while still technically under development.

The reason is that the drones were a “technology push rather than a requirements pull,” in which the manufacturer developed a new capability before combat commanders specified exactly what they needed, according to a congressional source familiar with the program. Only after the new Global Hawks were in the field “did the services find out how commanders would actually use them,” he said. Randy Belote, Northrop Grumman’s vice president for strategic communications, declined comment on this characterization.

The Block 30 models were designed to fly for 28-35 hours compared to the 10-12 hour endurance limit of the piloted U-2s.  But unlike the U-2, Global Hawks are not equipped with electronic countermeasures to defeat air defenses, and lack the U-2’s “all-weather” capability, according to congressional testimony by Air Force officials.

Moreover, the drones and their sensors have been prone to a wide range of problems, many of them blamed on the speed with which the aircraft were deployed.

To meet certain data needs, for example, Block 30s have been torn apart and rebuilt to add some sensors already present on the U-2. Built with hardwired sensors, unlike a newer, more “plug-and-play” version known as the Block 40, the Block 30 “lacks the flexibility to change with new requirements,” said the congressional source, who spoke on the condition that he not be identified.
The concurrent testing and production also “put it at increased risk of cost growth,” the Government Accountability Office said last year, and the program has twice triggered special statutory provisions alerting Congress to its cost overruns. In all, the cost of a single Global Hawk jumped by more than 150 percent, from about $88 million in 2001 to $223 million in 2012, GAO reported in March.

That record caused a special Pentagon report on June 28, examining why the defense-wide acquisition system routinely produces large cost overruns, to depict the Global Hawk in particular as an egregious outlier. “Analyzing just aircraft development contracts” such as Global Hawk, the report said, Northrop Grumman had “significantly higher cost growth” than rival behemoths Lockheed Martin and Boeing.

The program was restructured in 2011 by Deputy Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, then the Pentagon’s procurement chief, who nonetheless told Congress that its continuation “is essential to national security.” He cut the number of Block 30s to be bought and scaled back the full program’s price tag of $13.9 billion to $12.4 billion.

Meanwhile, rigorous testing from October 2010 through January 2011 led the Pentagon’s chief weapons tester to conclude that the Block 30 was unreliable. The Block 30’s “mission-critical air vehicle components fail at high rates, resulting in poor takeoff reliability, high air abort rates, low mission capable rates, an excessive demand for critical spare parts and a high demand for maintenance support,” J. Michael Gilmore said in a May 2011 report.

When flying at a near-continuous pace, the Block 30 provided less than half the required 55 percent “Effective Time On Station” coverage — the amount of time loitering over a target to gather intelligence — over a 30-day period, Gilmore said. Its sensor to identify radar and communications signals “does not consistently deliver actionable signal intelligence end-products to operational users due to technical performance deficiencies” and other reasons, he said.

As a result, Gilmore added, the Block 30 “is not operationally effective for conducting near-continuous, persistent ISR [intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance operations].”

Bracing for congressional “impact”
Given the Block 30 troubles, Air Force officials concluded in late 2011 that they could not fly both that aircraft and the U-2 under provisions in the Budget Control Act. The U-2 already met all the military’s requirements for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, while significant investment would be needed to give Block 30s the same capabilities.

The Air Force knew its decision would be controversial on Capitol Hill. “We were bracing for impact,” recalled a retired Air Force pilot who worked with the Air Force liaison office. “There are too many constituencies tied to the Global Hawk.”

“The Block 30 Global Hawk has fundamentally priced itself out of our ability to afford it when the U-2 gives, in some cases, a better capability and, in some cases, just a slightly less capable platform,” Dempsey told a House Armed Services Committee hearing on Feb. 15, 2012. “So what you are seeing there is our ability to eliminate redundancy, to continue to invest in the best value, and to avoid at every possibility redundancy that fundamentally is too expensive.”

But cost and reliability concerns took a back seat to the risk of losing jobs, said former Rep. Roscoe Bartlett, R-Md., who last year played a key role in blocking the proposed retirement of Block 30s as chairman of the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Tactical Air and Land Forces.

Bartlett, who lost his bid for re-election last fall, spoke openly about how his colleagues on the full committee “see the military as a jobs program,” something he said is not necessarily in the national interest. “How is that consistent with national security? And budget frugality?” he asked rhetorically, asserting that his colleagues often rationalize such dilemmas away.

“Everybody has to look in the mirror and not see a jerk, so they have to argue with themselves that keeping this factory going in their district is the best thing for their country, whether it is or not,” Bartlett said.

After rumors of the program’s cancellation surfaced in late 2011, Northrop Grumman activated a “Support Global Hawk” website that described the drones as “high-flying, combat-proven aircraft [that] are so robust and reliable that they’re in high demand by warfighters who fly them.”

The advocacy site, which Belote, the Northrop Grumman spokesman, told the Center for Public Integrity was set up at the request of company employees who supported the Block 30, listed all the suppliers, their congressional districts and the lawmakers who represented them. The site also offered a “Take Action” form visitors could fill in that would be emailed to their elected officials. “Please help our troops continue to receive this much-needed capability,” the site said.

Northrop Grumman also circulated fliers on Capitol Hill with a map of the country showing the locations of major Global Hawk manufacturing sites, military bases and major subcontractors. The “Global Hawk Enterprise across the U.S.” has 3,483 Northrop Grumman employees in 22 states, 303 suppliers in 36 states and almost $600 million in supplier purchases, the flier said.

It was a sales pitch that major defense contractors — and often the military services themselves — routinely circulate on Capitol Hill. “There are probably 500 floating around right now,” a House armed services aide said, referring to fliers similar to Northrop Grumman’s, emphasizing the jobs issue.
Among the 26 in-house and outside lobbyists who identified Global Hawk or surveillance issues on their lobbying reports were three well-connected former Republican aides to the House Appropriations Committee: Jeff Shockey, a former staff director; John Scofield, a former communications director; and Letitia White, a longtime aide to former Chairman Jerry Lewis, R-Calif. Also on the team was Northrop Grumman Vice President for Government Relations Sid Ashworth, who spent 14 years on the Senate Appropriations Committee staff, serving as staff director for two subcommittees, including defense.

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Judge Challenges White House Claims on Authority in Drone Killings

Published: July 19, 2013 by Scott Shane New York Times

WASHINGTON —  A federal judge on Friday sharply and repeatedly challenged the Obama administration’s claim that courts have no power over targeted drone killings of American citizens overseas.

 

Muhammad ud-Deen, via Associated Press

Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen in 2008. He was among three Americans killed in drone strikes by the United States  in 2011.

Judge Rosemary M. Collyer of the United States District Court here was hearing the government’s request to dismiss a lawsuit filed by relatives of three Americans killed in two drone strikes in Yemen in 2011: Anwar al-Awlaki, the radical cleric who had joined Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula; Mr. Awlaki’s 16-year-old son, Abdulrahman, who had no involvement in terrorism; and Samir Khan, a 30-year-old North Carolina man who had become a propagandist for the same Qaeda branch.

Judge Collyer said she was “troubled” by the government’s assertion that it could kill American citizens it designated as dangerous, with no role for courts to review the decision. 

“Are you saying that a U.S. citizen targeted by the United States in a foreign country has no constitutional rights?” she asked Brian Hauck, a deputy assistant attorney general. “How broadly are you asserting the right of the United States to target an American citizen? Where is the limit to this?”

She provided her own answer: “The limit is the courthouse door.” 

The case comes to court at a time when both the legality and wisdom of the administration’s use of targeted killing as a counterterrorism measure have come under question in Congress and among the public. The debate, including the first public discussions of drone strikes by Congress and a major speech by President Obama on May 23, has raised the possibility of a role for judges in approving the addition of Americans to the so-called kill list of suspected terrorists or in signing off on strikes.

Mr. Hauck acknowledged that Americans targeted overseas do have rights, but he said they could not be enforced in court either before or after the Americans were killed. Judges, he suggested, have neither the expertise nor the tools necessary to assess the danger posed by terrorists, the feasibility of capturing them or when and how they should be killed. 

Judge Collyer did not buy it. “No, no, no,” she said. “The executive is not an effective check on the executive.” She bridled at the notion that judges were incapable of properly assessing complex national security issues, declaring, “You’d be surprised at the amount of understanding other parts of the government think judges have.” 

Despite Judge Collyer’s evident frustration with parts of the Obama administration’s stance, legal experts say the plaintiffs face an uphill battle. They are Nasser al-Awlaki, father and grandfather of two of the men killed, who wrote about their deaths on Wednesday in The New York Times, and Sarah Khan, mother of Samir Khan. Only Anwar al-Awlaki was deliberately targeted, officials say; Mr. Khan was killed in the same strike, while Abdulrahman al-Awlaki was killed by mistake in a strike officials say was intended for a suspected terrorist who turned out not to be present. 

The relatives filed suit late last year, but not against the military and the Central Intelligence Agency, which carried out the strikes, because such lawsuits usually fail on technical grounds. Instead, they sued four officials in charge of the agencies at the time: David H. Petraeus, the former C.I.A. director; Leon E. Panetta, the former defense secretary; and two successive heads of the Joint Special Operations Command, Adm. William H. McRaven and Lt. Gen. Joseph L. Votel. 

The lawsuit is known as a Bivens action, after a 1971 Supreme Court ruling that permitted citizens to sue government officials personally under some circumstances for violating their constitutional rights.

The government is asking that the lawsuit be dismissed on several grounds. Mr. Hauck said decisions about targeted killing should be reserved to the “political” branches of government, the executive and legislative, not the judiciary. In addition, he said, allowing a lawsuit against top national security officials to proceed would set a dangerous and disruptive precedent. 

“We don’t want these counterterrorism officials distracted by the threat of litigation,” he said.

Pardiss Kebriaei of the Center for Constitutional Rights and Hina Shamsi of the American Civil Liberties Union, representing the plaintiffs, argued that the claims had extraordinary importance because they involved the deaths of Americans at the government’s hands. “The entire goal of Bivens is deterrence,” to discourage officials from infringing the rights of Americans, Ms. Shamsi said.

“The court still has a role to play in adjudicating whether or not a citizen’s rights have been violated,” she said. 

At one point, when Mr. Hauck referred to the Constitution, Judge Collyer, 67, who was appointed by President George W. Bush and also serves on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, interrupted to note that the Constitution prescribed three branches of government, and that she represented one of them. 

“The one that’s normally yelled at and not given any money,” she said, sounding as if she was not entirely joking. “The most important thing about the United States is that it’s a nation of laws.”

The judge said that she believed the case raised difficult questions and that she would “do a lot of reading and studying and thinking and try to reach a decision as soon as I can.”

A version of this article appeared in print on July 20, 2013, on page A8 of the New York edition with the headline: Judge Challenges White House Claims on Authority in Drone Killings.

The Drone That Killed My Grandson

The New York Times Opinion Pages
By NASSER al-AWLAKI
Published: July 17, 2013

SANA, Yemen — I LEARNED that my 16-year-old grandson, Abdulrahman — a United States citizen — had been killed by an American drone strike from news reports the morning after he died.

The missile killed him, his teenage cousin and at least five other civilians on Oct. 14, 2011, while the boys were eating dinner at an open-air restaurant in southern Yemen. 

I visited the site later, once I was able to bear the pain of seeing where he sat in his final moments. Local residents told me his body was blown to pieces. They showed me the grave where they buried his remains. I stood over it, asking why my grandchild was dead. 

Nearly two years later, I still have no answers. The United States government has refused to explain why Abdulrahman was killed. It was not until May of this year that the Obama administration, in a supposed effort to be more transparent, publicly acknowledged what the world already knew — that it was responsible for his death. 

The attorney general, Eric H. Holder Jr., said only that Abdulrahman was not “specifically targeted,” raising more questions than he answered. 

My grandson was killed by his own government. The Obama administration must answer for its actions and be held accountable. On Friday, I will petition a federal court in Washington to require the government to do just that. 

Abdulrahman was born in Denver. He lived in America until he was 7, then came to live with me in Yemen. He was a typical teenager — he watched “The Simpsons,” listened to Snoop Dogg, read “Harry Potter” and had a Facebook page with many friends. He had a mop of curly hair, glasses like me and a wide, goofy smile. 

In 2010, the Obama administration put Abdulrahman’s father, my son Anwar, on C.I.A. and Pentagon “kill lists” of suspected terrorists targeted for death. A drone took his life on Sept. 30, 2011.

The government repeatedly made accusations of terrorism against Anwar — who was also an American citizen — but never charged him with a crime. No court ever reviewed the government’s claims nor was any evidence of criminal wrongdoing ever presented to a court. He did not deserve to be deprived of his constitutional rights as an American citizen and killed. 

Early one morning in September 2011, Abdulrahman set out from our home in Sana by himself. He went to look for his father, whom he hadn’t seen for years. He left a note for his mother explaining that he missed his father and wanted to find him, and asking her to forgive him for leaving without permission. 

A couple of days after Abdulrahman left, we were relieved to receive word that he was safe and with cousins in southern Yemen, where our family is from. Days later, his father was targeted and killed by American drones in a northern province, hundreds of miles away. After Anwar died, Abdulrahman called us and said he was going to return home. 

That was the last time I heard his voice. He was killed just two weeks after his father. 

A country that believes it does not even need to answer for killing its own is not the America I once knew. From 1966 to 1977, I fulfilled a childhood dream and studied in the United States as a Fulbright scholar, earning my doctorate and then working as a researcher and assistant professor at universities in New Mexico, Nebraska and Minnesota. 

I have fond memories of those years. When I first came to the United States as a student, my host family took me camping by the ocean and on road trips to places like Yosemite, Disneyland and New York — and it was wonderful. 

After returning to Yemen, I used my American education and skills to help my country, serving as Yemen’s minister of agriculture and fisheries and establishing one of the country’s leading institutions of higher learning, Ibb University. Abdulrahman used to tell me he wanted to follow in my footsteps and go back to America to study. I can’t bear to think of those conversations now. 

After Anwar was put on the government’s list, but before he was killed, the American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Constitutional Rights represented me in a lawsuit challenging the government’s claim that it could kill anyone it deemed an enemy of the state. 

The court dismissed the case, saying that I did not have standing to sue on my son’s behalf and that the government’s targeted killing program was outside the court’s jurisdiction anyway. 

After the deaths of Abdulrahman and Anwar, I filed another lawsuit, seeking answers and accountability. The government has argued once again that its targeted killing program is beyond the reach of the courts. I find it hard to believe that this can be legal in a constitutional democracy based on a system of checks and balances. 

The government has killed a 16-year-old American boy. Shouldn’t it at least have to explain why?

Nasser al-Awlaki, the founder of Ibb University and former president of Sana University, served as Yemen’s minister of agriculture and fisheries from 1988 to 1990.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: July 20, 2013
Because of an editing error, an Op-Ed on Thursday incorrectly described Anwar al-Awlaki, the writer’s son, at the time of a lawsuit challenging the government’s targeted-killing program. He was alive when the suit was dismissed, not dead.